I’ve struggled with the concept of political centrism. I’ve found its positioning as “moderate” or “in the middle” of a left/right continuum at odds with its political incoherence and its totalising tendencies. I think centrism is better understood as a form of populism - bourgeois populism - if you like. It bundles up the shibboleths of the “metropolitain elite” (incoherence) and decries opposition as uncredentialed ignorance, and therefore illigitimate (totalising). As such it is little different from national populism, except that it centres “the people” on the better-credentialled professional classes, and demonises opponents not like them.
Uttering sound bites while wearing a high viz jacket is not an industrial strategy.
Reading Liz Truss’s piece in the Sunday Telegraph, I can only conclude that the UK political right has spent far too long, with way too much cocaine, talking to itself in darkened rooms. The only solution is sunlight and a lengthy period of cold turkey. Alas for us, we’re stuck the the Tories for another two years.
Elon Cohaagen cutting off the oxygen in Venusville is fiction, right?
Reading about power outages and trees exploding from the cold, and the best we’ve got is the wrong kind of snow every decade or so.
Dockhunt: closer to that journalistic slip of the tongue than the UK chancellor of the exchequer.
Not sure how public sector workers contribute to the “wage/price spiral” given their labour isn’t sold for profit on the open market.
The workers being lowered into the sewer are all Irish. This is England! We expect foreigners to clean up our shit.
What is your worst walk? Mine is Canning Town to the Greenway via Manor Road. Nasty in all weathers.
The BBC’s review into its taxation, public spending, government borrowing and debt output is interesting and worth a look, as is this commentary from Richard Murphy.